THE LITERARY MYTH OF FACUNDO QUIROGA IN THE CULTURAL WORLDVIEW OF ARGENTINES

Abstract

By the time of declaring their independence, Latin American countries had formed an enlightened class that was fundamentally different from its predecessors in terms of autonomy in relation to state power. Despite ideological differences, their common mission was to draw up a “symbolic map” of the newly formed republics, endowing the vast, ethnically and socially heterogeneous space of the native land with new cultural meanings. On American soil, writers, poets, historians and publicists of the second half of 19th century had first to rethink such political concepts as “state” and “nation”, established in the European consciousness. To solve this problem, the writers borrowed formal methods and techniques longstanding in Europe. Thus, within the framework of Latin American social romanticism, the search for national identity was accomplished by turning to myth. The article deals with the experience of literary myth-ma­king in the works of Argentine followers of romanticism. The main material of this linguoculturological study is the program work of the educator and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811—1888) “Civilization and Barbarism: The Biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga, and the Physical Appearance, Customs and Mores of the Argentine Republic”. Published in 1845, in the midst of a longtime civil strife in Argentina, it gained success among the compatriots as a cruel pamphlet against the leader of that time, Governor of Buenos Aires Province J.M. de Rosas, whose personal authority in the regions had been based on the brute force of the Caudillo. Meanwhile, the deep meaning of the text is embodied in the central figure of the narrative, “the evil Gaucho” Facundo Quiroga. On the historical material of the civil war of the first third of the 19th century, the writer created a mythical epic hero, designed to personify the underlying movement of the young Argentine nation. During the structural analysis of the myth of the charisma­tic people’s leader Facundo, the article highlights the mythological hypostases of this complex artistic image, which orga­nically combines the features of a primal ancestor, a totem, a trickster and a hero. The author concludes on the role of literary myth as a cultural mediator of Argentine society.